Incredible, its very exciting - There is ALOT of tech progress in recent years. Many commercial fusion companies are steaming ahead, graphene transistors, ITER is being assembled, SpaceX keeps on going, quantum geometry (Nima Arkani-Hamed), 2 satelites on their way to jupiters moon Europa oh boy oh boy OH BOY, theres so much going on and its all so fascinating!
The ability to create and sustain fusion is accepted and understood, especially with tokamak's in regards to operational time length; but if the goal is energy production unlike ITER whose much larger tokamak i have no doubt of sustaining much longer periods of fusion (though no plans for energy production) what is this project's choice of electrical energy conversion?
@StephenShankland thanks for the reply! Was wondering about it. slightly related side note: when will we exit the steam age? The max efficiency of steam turbines still being under 50% i am quite hopeful for advances in some other form of energy conversion to electricity that may be more efficient, for example electrostatic methods like the Venetian Blind. though for now in time the priority is of course achieving stable longer term fusion I am hopeful/working on better conversion methods
😂 Да хоть в течении года, но свободной энергии вам не получить. Как не получили алфимики философский камень. Не в 2030, и даже не в 2035.🎉 Легче человека отправить на Луну с миссий Аполлон.
@@lazy7632 Fusion violates no physical laws; it can't give us free energy. What it can do is through fusion give out more energy due to how the fundamental forces work at very extreme conditions; direct drive systems unlike the Tokamak have proved a net positive run of a Q factor of 1.5 (from memory may be wrong on the exact Q factor)
I think this project's odds of success in the next few years are modest (10%). But, since the cost of the gamble is only a few billion, and the prize for success is potentially trillions in wealth plus difficult to quantify environmental benefits--the gamble is easily justified.
@@bxlawless100 Well, then the engineers have been very lazy, haven't they? When did we complete our scientific understanding and turn things over to those lazy engineers?
@@StephenShankland TIL Stephen Shankland of CNET is now at CFS 😣😭Gunna miss your pieces on the semi industry but congrats on the new gig! Very well deserved and best of luck!
Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) SPARC machine is very far away from CFS’s promotional claims that it is a prototype of the ARC machine that CFS claims will generate approximately 100 megawatt-hours of continuous, grid-ready, electrical energy. The ARC machine plans include a tritium breeding blanket and tritium processing facilities required to generate the radioactive tritium component of this D-T fueled fusion experimental reactor. SPARC is not a prototype. It is a greatly stripped-down version of the ARC design, primarily to research how to solve many of the continuing problems plaguing the nuclear fusion energy field. SPARC will lack a primary heat removal system. As a result the experimental D-T ‘fusion’ test shots will each require a lengthy thermal recovery period before the next ‘shot’ can be conducted. SPARC will lack the essential tritium breeder blanket along with associated tritium processing facilities. Unlike a typical electrical power generating facility SPARC is missing a reactor heat removal system as well as a turbine-generator system. SPARC experimental shots will have to be widely spaced in order to allow a thermal recovery of the machine.
Totally wrong, this is by far the most promising Fusion project specifically because they've gone after the most reliable and demonstrated fusion tech (Tokamaks). Every other fusion project is far more risky and immaterial compared to this (and the UK's Tokamak Energy) because those technologies have never been demonstrated. This will work, the only question is whether it can work continuously and profitably.
Business plan: Pitch an exciting idea to gullible investors. Take their money and build stuff. Make it seem like it could work any day now. Take the additional funds and pay yourself. Abandon idea altogether
Fusion is totally safe compared to fission. It requires energy and fuel to run, so hitting the off switch immediately stops the reaction. No radioactive fuels or waste either. That's why there are no TV shows about fusion reactor disasters!
Good news: Meltdowns and runaway chain reactions just don't happen with fusion. If something goes dramatically wrong, the plasma stops fusing and cools down immediately. We do actually produce some radioactive materials: the vacuum vessel over a period of years gets activated by the fast-moving neutrons. It's not long-lived or high-level nuclear waste, though. And one of our fuels is tritium, which is also radioactive, but fusion requires very little fuel, and we'll make our own tritium within the tokamak itself for a closed fuel cycle. Fusion doesn't require large quantities of fuel. I believe there was some research in the 1970s about unleashing demons, but it proved not to have any commercial viability beyond licensing the movie rights to Ghostbusters.
The development of a commercially viable nuclear fusion plant remains a distant goal, likely several decades away and possibly closer to a century. To date, no experimental reactor has managed to generate a significant amount of fusion power. The net energy gain-the difference between the energy produced and the energy required to sustain the experiment-remains disappointingly low. No fusion reactor has ever operated in a stable manner to produce substantial power consistently over many years. For example, a 400 MWe power plant would require a reactor capable of generating approximately 1,200 MW of fusion power. The most notable achievement so far was the production of around 17 MW at JET, and that lasted for only one second in the late 1990s. (I am not even commenting on the amount of energy needed to produce 17 MW for 1 s of fusion power... it would be too embarassing). Furthermore, no fusion experiment has succeeded in delivering even a single watt-hour of electricity to the power grid. Another significant challenge is the lack of materials capable of withstanding the extreme heat and neutron fluxes required for sustained, full-power operation over decades-or even weeks-in a fusion plant. The claim that fusion fuel is abundant and inexpensive is also misleading. Tritium, one of the primary fuels for fusion, does not exist naturally. The worldwide inventory is limited to roughly 20 kilograms, primarily as a byproduct of CANDU fission reactors. While technology to breed tritium within fusion reactors is under development, it remains unproven and untested. Even under the most optimistic projections, experts agree that perfecting this technology will take decades. Beyond solving the scientific, material, and technological hurdles, a commercial fusion plant must also demonstrate acceptable levels of availability, maintainability, and reparability. Achieving these operational benchmarks will require the design, construction, and rigorous testing of several full-scale prototypes.
With all due respect and I love fusion but why does this need to be cut into?Yet a new swath of forest can we build it within the city so we don't continue spreading out like cancer and keeping beautiful forested land intact ???
Good question, I'm a huge fan of trees... I mean, just look at my username, and thankfully the amount of land that's to be cleared is very very modest for the scale of the technology involved. Besides, if fusion displaces coal plants (which is part of the whole idea in order to avoid consequences from something called Jevon's Paradox, which you might find interesting) which require coal mines which frequently seriously deforest mountainous areas, the amount of tree acreage saved will be on the order of thousands highly conservatively of times more than the trees on the the land used to do this. In other words, even in terms of trees, it's an extremely good bargain. Also the technology is actually quite well adapted to going into old coal plants, a method which both uses existing infrastructure (so no sad trees where new power-lines would otherwise be built) and keeps cost down because new construction is minimized. It's cheaper and greener and safer and I'd bet my lunch money for a month that it's going to work.
The coordinated motion on that welding robot was amazing
Whoever did that deserves a raise
If this works, it will change humanity. Godspede!
More exciting about this than humanoid robots. This will be a massive game changer.
This is history in the making
Luckily for you this will result in robots hopped up on fusion power
It still has to work. Remember this is a prototype. Personally I hope it is a bang up success.
Thank you for the bottom of my heart, Commonwealth fusion systems! ❤
From Italy 👋
please much more updates like this
Kudos to Bob and the team!
Incredible, its very exciting - There is ALOT of tech progress in recent years.
Many commercial fusion companies are steaming ahead, graphene transistors, ITER is being assembled, SpaceX keeps on going, quantum geometry (Nima Arkani-Hamed), 2 satelites on their way to jupiters moon Europa oh boy oh boy OH BOY, theres so much going on and its all so fascinating!
This sounds exciting! I can't wait for future updates
Incredible progress!!! 🏃♂️🏃♀️🏃
The ability to create and sustain fusion is accepted and understood, especially with tokamak's in regards to operational time length; but if the goal is energy production unlike ITER whose much larger tokamak i have no doubt of sustaining much longer periods of fusion (though no plans for energy production) what is this project's choice of electrical energy conversion?
We'll use a molten salt blanket that the fusion neutrons heat up. That will heat water that runs a conventional steam turbine.
@StephenShankland thanks for the reply! Was wondering about it. slightly related side note: when will we exit the steam age? The max efficiency of steam turbines still being under 50% i am quite hopeful for advances in some other form of energy conversion to electricity that may be more efficient, for example electrostatic methods like the Venetian Blind. though for now in time the priority is of course achieving stable longer term fusion I am hopeful/working on better conversion methods
😂 Да хоть в течении года, но свободной энергии вам не получить. Как не получили алфимики философский камень. Не в 2030, и даже не в 2035.🎉 Легче человека отправить на Луну с миссий Аполлон.
@@lazy7632 Fusion violates no physical laws; it can't give us free energy. What it can do is through fusion give out more energy due to how the fundamental forces work at very extreme conditions; direct drive systems unlike the Tokamak have proved a net positive run of a Q factor of 1.5 (from memory may be wrong on the exact Q factor)
This Fusion project is far above all others.
Keep up the good work. Feeding the algorithm.
Amazing work, keep it up.
I think this project's odds of success in the next few years are modest (10%). But, since the cost of the gamble is only a few billion, and the prize for success is potentially trillions in wealth plus difficult to quantify environmental benefits--the gamble is easily justified.
There's tones of these going on, all we need is 1 of them to be a success
There’s no new science for this to work.
@@bxlawless100 We'll get there
@@bxlawless100 Well, then the engineers have been very lazy, haven't they? When did we complete our scientific understanding and turn things over to those lazy engineers?
@@kreek22Ha!! You really have no clue what is takes to scale up and reliably demonstrate a radical technology like this.
Cool, time estimates on initial completion?
We expect SPARC will demonstrate net fusion energy in 2027 and our ARC fusion power plant will put power on the grid in the early 2030s.
@ Thanks
I would not be surprised if either this or Crispr will become the biggest thing since the transistor.
If they get the reactor working this year, i will eat a sandwich.
We will not get our SPARC fusion machine working this year, though we're building it. Q>1 is 2027. I wholly sandwich consumption regardless.
@@StephenShankland TIL Stephen Shankland of CNET is now at CFS 😣😭Gunna miss your pieces on the semi industry but congrats on the new gig! Very well deserved and best of luck!
@@ilyaskiziloglu7397 I do miss the semiconductor biz, and a lot of other subjects I covered, but no regrets!
❤❤😂😂😂. Когда же наконец успех? ❤
When fusion
We expect our SPARC tokamak to generate net fusion energy (aka Q>1) in 2027.
About 20 years from now
@@StephenShankland Hey, Really appreciate the reply and wish you the Best, If fusion were easy we'd have it by now. Looking forward to updates!
@@StephenShankland Is that Q_t or Q_p? Please don't embarrass yourself by announcing a BS definition of Q like NIF did.
nice
Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) SPARC machine is very far away from CFS’s promotional claims that it is a prototype of the ARC machine that CFS claims will generate approximately 100 megawatt-hours of continuous, grid-ready, electrical energy. The ARC machine plans include a tritium breeding blanket and tritium processing facilities required to generate the radioactive tritium component of this D-T fueled fusion experimental reactor.
SPARC is not a prototype. It is a greatly stripped-down version of the ARC design, primarily to research how to solve many of the continuing problems plaguing the nuclear fusion energy field.
SPARC will lack a primary heat removal system. As a result the experimental D-T ‘fusion’ test shots will each require a lengthy thermal recovery period before the next ‘shot’ can be conducted. SPARC will lack the essential tritium breeder blanket along with associated tritium processing facilities. Unlike a typical electrical power generating facility SPARC is missing a reactor heat removal system as well as a turbine-generator system.
SPARC experimental shots will have to be widely spaced in order to allow a thermal recovery of the machine.
deserves the Bernie Madoff / Elizabeth Holmes award for fusion
It's on us to deliver the goods, but our superconducting magnets and other examples of progress in this video are not imaginary.
Totally wrong, this is by far the most promising Fusion project specifically because they've gone after the most reliable and demonstrated fusion tech (Tokamaks). Every other fusion project is far more risky and immaterial compared to this (and the UK's Tokamak Energy) because those technologies have never been demonstrated. This will work, the only question is whether it can work continuously and profitably.
Business plan: Pitch an exciting idea to gullible investors. Take their money and build stuff. Make it seem like it could work any day now. Take the additional funds and pay yourself. Abandon idea altogether
You're building this a mile from my house... please don't make chesterfield chernobyl or open a warp portal that demons will come out of. Please.
Fusion is totally safe compared to fission. It requires energy and fuel to run, so hitting the off switch immediately stops the reaction. No radioactive fuels or waste either. That's why there are no TV shows about fusion reactor disasters!
Good news: Meltdowns and runaway chain reactions just don't happen with fusion. If something goes dramatically wrong, the plasma stops fusing and cools down immediately.
We do actually produce some radioactive materials: the vacuum vessel over a period of years gets activated by the fast-moving neutrons. It's not long-lived or high-level nuclear waste, though. And one of our fuels is tritium, which is also radioactive, but fusion requires very little fuel, and we'll make our own tritium within the tokamak itself for a closed fuel cycle. Fusion doesn't require large quantities of fuel.
I believe there was some research in the 1970s about unleashing demons, but it proved not to have any commercial viability beyond licensing the movie rights to Ghostbusters.
The development of a commercially viable nuclear fusion plant remains a distant goal, likely several decades away and possibly closer to a century. To date, no experimental reactor has managed to generate a significant amount of fusion power. The net energy gain-the difference between the energy produced and the energy required to sustain the experiment-remains disappointingly low.
No fusion reactor has ever operated in a stable manner to produce substantial power consistently over many years. For example, a 400 MWe power plant would require a reactor capable of generating approximately 1,200 MW of fusion power. The most notable achievement so far was the production of around 17 MW at JET, and that lasted for only one second in the late 1990s. (I am not even commenting on the amount of energy needed to produce 17 MW for 1 s of fusion power... it would be too embarassing).
Furthermore, no fusion experiment has succeeded in delivering even a single watt-hour of electricity to the power grid.
Another significant challenge is the lack of materials capable of withstanding the extreme heat and neutron fluxes required for sustained, full-power operation over decades-or even weeks-in a fusion plant.
The claim that fusion fuel is abundant and inexpensive is also misleading. Tritium, one of the primary fuels for fusion, does not exist naturally. The worldwide inventory is limited to roughly 20 kilograms, primarily as a byproduct of CANDU fission reactors. While technology to breed tritium within fusion reactors is under development, it remains unproven and untested. Even under the most optimistic projections, experts agree that perfecting this technology will take decades.
Beyond solving the scientific, material, and technological hurdles, a commercial fusion plant must also demonstrate acceptable levels of availability, maintainability, and reparability. Achieving these operational benchmarks will require the design, construction, and rigorous testing of several full-scale prototypes.
With all due respect and I love fusion but why does this need to be cut into?Yet a new swath of forest can we build it within the city so we don't continue spreading out like cancer and keeping beautiful forested land intact ???
Don't be a 🤡. Not many trees at all in the grand scheme of things
Good question, I'm a huge fan of trees... I mean, just look at my username, and thankfully the amount of land that's to be cleared is very very modest for the scale of the technology involved. Besides, if fusion displaces coal plants (which is part of the whole idea in order to avoid consequences from something called Jevon's Paradox, which you might find interesting) which require coal mines which frequently seriously deforest mountainous areas, the amount of tree acreage saved will be on the order of thousands highly conservatively of times more than the trees on the the land used to do this. In other words, even in terms of trees, it's an extremely good bargain. Also the technology is actually quite well adapted to going into old coal plants, a method which both uses existing infrastructure (so no sad trees where new power-lines would otherwise be built) and keeps cost down because new construction is minimized. It's cheaper and greener and safer and I'd bet my lunch money for a month that it's going to work.
😅😅😅😅😅😅😅.. Денег не жалели.